Recently, people have been health-conscious and various exercise assist devices have been developed in recent years. Meanwhile, metabolic syndrome has been highlighted as a potential risk to cause adult illnesses and the body-mass index (BMI) value has been emphasized as its reference value. The BMI value is the index that is calculated based on the relationship between body weight and body height and indicates the degree of obesity. When the body height is t (m) and body weight is w (kg), BMI is represented by the equation BMI=w/t2. An operator doing exercise with the use of the aforementioned exercise assist device measures his/her body weight and height after exercise, calculates the BMI value and observes an effect of exercise. It is useful if the operator can easily measure his/her body height and the like during exercise or between exercises.
In addition to increase of the number of game devices, the number of game devices an operator plays while using his/her whole body for improved user-friendliness and entertainment has also been increasing. In such game devices, if a computer can easily recognize the movement and position of the operator, various games corresponding to the movement and position of the operator can be produced.
In order to meet a need to obtain such a position of an object and spatial information, several methods have been proposed for general use, in which the position and movement of the object are detected by capturing an image of the object by a video camera and the like (see e.g. Patent Document 1). However, conventional position detection devices have a problem that they require calibration every shooting, installation work of their ancillary equipments, and a complicated work such as putting on and taking off a special marker to the object.
The present invention was made with the view of such a problem and an objective of the present invention is to provide an image recognition device and an image recognition method: in which an operator's height and the position of each body part of the operator are detected with a certain range of accuracy by a member that is an anthropometric reference provided on a floor mat of an exercise assist device or a game device and used for calculation of a BMI value and operation of a game.    Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2003-28614    Patent Document 2: Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2005-164448